“Baymard produces some of the most relevant and actionable user experience research available. They really understand the needs of UX and Product Management professionals, and their deep experience in the eCommerce field allows them to offer sophisticated, nuanced insights.”

This original usability study focuses on how users behave during a checkout flow, where they get stuck, and why they abandon their purchase.

The findings presented in these 17 reports (720-page in total), are based on two rounds of large-scale qualitative testing of e-commerce checkout processes, along with an additional large-scale eye-tracking test, and quantitative research with 6,000+ participants. Despite testing the checkout flows from 25 leading e-commerce sites, the test subjects encountered more than 2,700 usability issues in the process of going from the shopping cart to completing their order.

In fact, the combined test data documents that the average site can increase its conversion rate by 35.26% solely through better checkout design. And these figures are based on the testing of checkout processes from leading e-commerce sites, such as Walmart, Amazon, Wayfair, Crate & Barrel, ASOS, etc.

In these 17 reports, we have distilled all 2,700+ usability issues encountered by the test subjects into 134 checkout user experience guidelines, and prioritized them by UX impact – providing you with concise design guidelines that will help you improve the performance of your checkout process.

What you’ll get in the 17 Checkout Usability reports

134 actionable design guidelines divided into 17 topics.

400+ user quotes illustrating what customers think when they abandon their purchase.

“I can not tell you how much help your benchmark studies have been for our company, e-commerce and UX teams. We have used and continue to use these reports for baseline benchmarks as we build test protocols or eye tracking scripts etc. in lab.”

Checkout flows for signed in users, users creating an account, or checking out as a guest, incl. account-selection designs and communication,‘Delayed Account Creation’, social media accounts, password rules.

How the checkout flow and fields need to change when users gift-mark items, where and how users should be able to gift-mark items, and how the actual gifting features needs to be presented to avoid issues.

The payment methods interface, how to integrate and display an array of different third-party payment methods, the gift card redemption flow, and more.

Cart & Checkout

Credit Card Form

Cart & Checkout

Credit Card Form

10 Guidelines, 39 Pages

How to cause as few abandonments as possible, incl. the credit card field design, card validation logic and formatting, expiration date, security code, and cardholder name inputs, field sequence, card icons, and card type selection.

Cart & Checkout

Order Review

Cart & Checkout

Order Review

5 Guidelines, 27 Pages

How to properly design the final ‘Review’ step before a user completes an order, including ‘Place Order’ button placement, and necessary review data, along with the editing flow for those users who need to change data.

Cart & Checkout

Order Confirmation & E-Mail

Cart & Checkout

Order Confirmation & E-Mail

4 Guidelines, 21 Pages

The implementation of post-purchase confirmations, incl. the information and actions needed on the order confirmation page and order confirmation email.

Cart & Checkout

Form & Page Design

Cart & Checkout

Form & Page Design

10 Guidelines, 42 Pages

How to design and position the cart link in the site wide header and primary button throughout the checkout, minimizing form intimidation, avoiding multi-column layouts, using ‘Enclosed Checkout’ designs, etc.

Cart & Checkout

User Interactions & Distractions

Cart & Checkout

User Interactions & Distractions

10 Guidelines, 36 Pages

How to implement load indicators, when to provide feedback on user actions, where to avoid ‘Apply’ buttons, embedding content from third-parties, and much more on interactive components.

Cart & Checkout

Cross-Sells

Cart & Checkout

Cross-Sells

4 Guidelines, 19 Pages

How to thoughtfully incorporate cross-sells into a checkout flow, including the use of active vs. passive cross-selling, adapting cross-sells to user context, and pitfalls of specific placements and wording.

Cart & Checkout

Validation Errors & Data Persistence

Cart & Checkout

Validation Errors & Data Persistence

10 Guidelines, 43 Pages

Error recovery and address validation experiences, incl. how to improve users’ ability to locate, understand, and resolve errors, and more.

Cart & Checkout

Field Labels & Microcopy

Cart & Checkout

Field Labels & Microcopy

7 Guidelines, 30 Pages

How to mark optional and required fields, appropriate label positions, inline labels, optimizing microcopy and descriptions, and marking of optional and required fields.

Cart & Checkout

Field Design & Features

Cart & Checkout

Field Design & Features

8 Guidelines, 42 Pages

The proper selection and assembly of form elements, inputs, and selections, incl. choosing the right type of interface, field masking and character restrictions, and more.

Cart & Checkout

Default Values & Autocompletion

Cart & Checkout

Default Values & Autocompletion

8 Guidelines, 36 Pages

Intelligent form features such as making inferred selections, prefilling form fields, browser auto-fills, and personalization of the checkout flow — smart form field features that improve checkout UX substantially.

Jill McDonald,
UX Architect at Room & Board

“The Baymard reports have proven to be an invaluable resource for us. Comprehensive, pragmatic and actionable. We have redesigned our checkout process and made changes to our category pages based on usability guidelines in the reports.”

Benchmark: Is your checkout better than Apple’s or Walmart’s?

Based on the findings of this checkout research study we’ve benchmarked the checkout processes of 60 top grossing US and European e-commerce sites. This provides you with the most comprehensive e-commerce checkout database in the world with 720 manually reviewed checkout steps, more than 2,000 screenshots, and 5,000+ categorized implementation examples of the 134 checkout usability guidelines.

When you purchase the checkout usability study you get full access to this benchmark database.

Furthermore the benchmark database include tools that allow you to review your own (or your clients’) checkout process and see how it stacks up against the competition.

What you’ll get in the Checkout Usability benchmark

Full unrestricted access to the benchmark database with 60 checkout usability case studies of top grossing e-commerce sites.

Refund policy: We stand by our research and offer you a full 14 days “no questions asked” refund. If you’re not satisfied, simply e-mail us at christian@baymard.com for a full refund.

Baymard Institute’s research is used by:

Will Close,
Director of A/B Testing at Nike.com

“Intelligent, consumer-focused insights that are clear and actionable. The team in the room really loved the way the Baymard Institute highlighted the optimizations in the various user experience elements (copy, layout, design, calls-to-action…), from the perspective of consumer struggles. Baymard’s Usability research really complements our other existing research tools.”

Bryan Trogdon,
Director of User Experience at Office Depot

“Baymard has been a great resource in helping us improve the customer experience. We are continually applying these best practices to our sites.”

Steve Krug,
Author of 'Don't Make Me Think'

“Damn. The reports that the @Baymard folks do cost money, but they're worth it.”

Jaime Wilson,
Sr. Director of Design & Development at Overstock.com

“Thanks again for the great work on our checkout project. Our whole group found it incredibly insightful. We’re applying the suggestions you provided to our new checkout design which launches at the end of the month! One of my colleagues was also interested in your group’s competitive expertise with regard to responsive web and native apps.”

Abraham Berkowitz,
B&H Photo

“I can confirm that the list was fully implemented. Every time we put up a change we either A/B test or we watch it very closely to determine that it's doing better and not the opposite. So I can confirm that these fixes have improved our checkout. Thanks for everything.”

See all 64 testimonials

Sergey Vorozhtsov,
CEO at S3 Stores, Inc.

“We implemented “E-Commerce Checkout Usability” guide for all our stores and saw doubling of checkout conversion rates. We will soon work on implementation of other usability guidelines. Thank you Christian and Jamie for your excellent work!”

Vitaly Friedman,
Editor in Chief of Smashing Magazine

“This is very, very useful! Let me check what we can do to improve the usability in the Smashing Shop.”

Ryan Finley,
Site Search Professional at Kohl’s Department Stores

“I really like the work Baymard Institute does around usability. Their articles often get my Ecom gears turning.”

Kerry McAleer-Forte,
Director of User Experience Research at Sears

“Baymard produces some of the most relevant and actionable user experience research available. They really understand the needs of UX and Product Management professionals, and their deep experience in the eCommerce field allows them to offer sophisticated, nuanced insights.”

Catherine Brunson,
Customer Experience Strategist at Belk

“I can not tell you how much help your benchmark studies have been for our company, e-commerce and UX teams. We have used and continue to use these reports for baseline benchmarks as we build test protocols or eye tracking scripts etc. in lab.”

Cary Moody,
Usability Researcher at Hallmark

“These reports are fabulous. The content is exactly what our team has been looking for, and so much more! Extremely helpful, thank you!”

Achim Grunwald,
Head of UX at Zalando

“Hi Baymard-Team, I'm a fan of your reports – I bought some of them, learned from them and continuously use them in my day-to-day. I like them so much that I also recommend them in expert groups. Thank you for the great work!”

Leah Kaufman,
Senior UX Research Manager at Lenovo

“Excellent tool – looking forward to using it with our other sites and prototypes as they’re developed.”

“Thank you very much for the 7 usability audits of our country-specific sites. The audits have provided us with specific and actionable advice, allowed us to prioritize development resources , and enabled us to compare UX performance between the 7 different country-specific sites, and against State of the Art implementations. The audit itself is done really professionally and the recommendations contain actionable and insightful information.”

Alex Wright,
Director of Research at Etsy

“Thank you. This was an excellent piece of work: professional, thorough, and actionable for the team. We're very happy with the work Baymard has done for us so far, and I hope we'll have the chance to work together again on future projects.”

“Great UX report on shopping cart checkout forms/process we have used in a few audits recently. http://t.co/vkpeYOAS”

Jason Greene,
UX Design Lead at ClickBank

“It is immensely valuable having a thorough, independent study to help validate my work and in particular, help facilitate buy-off from stakeholders. Baymard has quickly become one of my most trusted resources for the UX/UI field.”

Rick Lange,
Owner of StudioStreet

“I am just thrilled by this study, it's helped me in the construction of my online store checkout. All points in this study make incredible sense, and I cannot help but incorporate all of these suggestions. Incredible.”

“Many thanks for presenting earlier. I have caught up with the teams and they all found your audit report really useful and are on board with the suggestions.”

Matthew Gardner,
Director of UX at Sports Authority

“Thank you for all the value delivered ahead of our new fiscal years. Your insights not only provided a definitive foundation for our UX roadmap but completely sold our executive team on the value of expert usability insights. Your service paid for itself in a matter of days and ensured all critical gaps will be filled ahead of us running the audit again next year.”

Erin Straub,
UX Design Manager at Nutrisystem

“The recommendations in our Checkout Usability Audit were awesome - well prioritized, actionable and helped us focus on what to optimize. This audit, along with the e-Commerce Usability Reports & Benchmark Databases, are my go-to resources for thorough, insightful information. Thank you!”

Aaron Henig,
Operations Manager at Epicenter Consulting, New York

“Given the tricky science of conversion rate optimization, it is great to know that you are dealing with professionals whose advice is based on solid research. It was a pleasure collaborating with the Baymard team.”

Chris Hall,
President of RepairClinic.com

“Within a very short time Baymard Institute provided 15 clear, useful improvement suggestions for our checkout process. We intend to implement all of them. It’s easy to find companies that offer website improvement suggestions. But, most companies don’t do their homework and don’t provide specific examples of how best to make the improvements. With Baymard Institute, the checkout process suggestions they made were intuitive, specific, and actionable. I highly recommend their audit service.”

Anthony Thomas,
UX responsible at StickerMule.com

“Wow, this is great! Just reviewed it with the team. It's a huge help and we're excited to fix these issues.”

Wendy Bonnstetter,
UX Director at Hallmark Cards, Inc.

“The walkthrough today was great. The report was very, very well done and loaded with great opportunities for us to improve our business. I wanted to again express my appreciation for working with us on such a condensed time frame last month. You and your team have been amazing partners to us and we very much appreciate the work, expertise and partnership.”

David Polanco,
UX Lead at Carnival Cruise Lines

“We like what we are reviewing from the audit - great analysis and feedback.”

Efe Yaman,
Program Manager at n11.com

“We have worked with a number of third party companies before on various projects/audits, and I can certainly say that working with Baymard was not only a pleasure; but you delivered on time; to the level of depth we wanted; addressing important issues; and answering all our questions; and you did all this for a great price. A big THANK YOU on behalf of N11.”

Linda Bustos,
Director of E-commerce Research at Elastic Path

“Baymard’s real-user research is invaluable for ecommerce marketers. It leaves no stone unturned, and with the guideline checklists provided, you’ll be well equipped to optimize your mobile presence.”

Colleen Kersting,
eCommerce Marketing at Harley-Davidson

“We found the audits extremely helpful and validated a number of changes we have been wanting to make or are in the process of making, so thank again for all the great insights.”

Cat Brunson,
UX Manager at Columbia Sportswear

“This was indeed very helpful guidance and a very well-documented roadmap for us to fix, validate, organize, collectively understand and continually improve our ecommerce foundation.”

Jill McDonald,
UX Architect at Room & Board

“The Baymard reports have proven to be an invaluable resource for us. Comprehensive, pragmatic and actionable. We have redesigned our checkout process and made changes to our category pages based on usability guidelines in the reports.”

“The Baymard Institute have some seriously good reports on ecommerce usability, design, and best practices: http://t.co/cuxO3VwiVe”

Jan Jursa,
Curator of IATV and the MobX conference

“Worth every dollar. It’s well done, good looking and simply very useful.”

Karen Kysar,
Site & Search Optimization Lead at iProspect

“I love the information that you guys provide and have bought a couple of reports. Love them.”

Rossa Butler,
Marketing Manager at 53DegreesNorth.ie

“I just purchased your E-Commerce Checkout Usability guide today and it is fantastic. I will certainly be recommending it to my friends in the E-Commerce industry [...]”

Greg Dalby,
Director of E-Commerce at Purch

“Really good rundown on all these thing. I definitely think we got a lot of value out of it, and we’re excited to get it all in and do some A/B testing on this.”

Chris Hall,
President of RepairClinic.com

“We implemented the majority of your checkout recommendations and a/b tested most of them, in every instance your recommendation provided the catalyst for us to make an improvement. Your approach and methodology has proven itself to be valuable. Now, when a new report comes out from your office we just buy it right away.”

Mike Arsenault,
Co-founder of Rejoiner

“I wanted to write you a note to tell you how much I've gotten out of the Usability Benchmark I bought this Summer. We often get asked to for help with checkout usability and I often refer people your way. Keep up the great work!”

“Every 10 years or so comes a report on usability for e-commerce sites that is really worth buying.”

Steve Johnson,
Owner of brilliantlabels.co.uk

“The purchase price of this guide is absolutely nothing compared to the benefits you'll get!”

Rajarajan Kannayan,
UI Architect at Cognizant

“We purchased your wonderful e-commerce usability report and it is in fact very useful to our current work and research.”

Daniel Kohn,
Founder of AbandonAid

“I really enjoy what you guys do. I bought your guide over a year ago to help a large website I consult to improve their checkout.”

Rikard Stolz,
E-Commerce Optimization Manager at Vodafone Australia

“Best checkout report I've read to date.”

Rober Coorey,
Author of 'Feed A Starving Crowd'

“We implemented these guidelines on a client's website and our e-commerce conversion rate increased 18.7% across the board. Most importantly out mobile conversions increased from 0.89% to 1.9% – we doubled our mobile revenue.”

Claire White,
UX Specialist for Kingfisher PLC

“The Baymard E-commerce Usability reports have proven to be a valuable resource for UX teams within our organisation both at group and operating company level. The reports contain precise, actionable insights and recommendations which are backed up by extensive research and data. The severity and frequency ratings have helped our development teams to prioritise which areas to improve first. The most recent improvements we’ve recommended from the Ecommerce Search report have been extremely well received by senior stakeholders and have already been fed into the backlog.”